Mac partition recovery steps are as follows: a) Install, launch the free trial of Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac software. B) On the Select What To Recover screen, click Next. C) On the Select Location screen, click Can’t Find Volume, then click Next. Image: Look for deleted partition. Free Mac File Recovery. Stellar Data Recovery Free Edition for Mac software performs instant recovery of deleted documents, emails, archives, photos, audios, and videos from Mac devices such as iMac, Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Mac mini. With enhanced support for multiple file systems like APFS, HFS, HFS+, FAT32, ex-FAT and NTFS, the. Partition Recovery, a built-in feature in MiniTool Partition Wizard, is able to recover partitions lost by Windows update, wrong deletion, partition table damage, virus attack, etc. It is capable of recovering lost partitions as well as all the files saved on the partition from IDE disk, SATA disk, SCSI disk, mobile hard disk, and other types.
Mac Recovery Partition, we also call it macOS Recovery, is part of the built-in recovery system of your Mac running in OS X 10.7 Lion and newer. It can help you to restore from Time Machine, reinstall macOS, get help online, repair or erase a hard disk, and more.
“How do I reinstall Mac from Recovery Partition?”
“How do I create a Recovery Partition for High Sierra?”
“Mac partition recovery mode is not working.”
The more questions you can find from Apple Discussion.
Here, we gather the full guide to use Recovery Partition on Mac, including boot and fix it.
Recovery Partition on Mac
Part 1. How to Boot from Recovery Partition on Mac?
As mentioned above, Recovery Partition on Mac is created for helping you to restore data, erase hard disk and reinstall macOS. No matter what you want to do, you should reboot Recovery Partition on Mac firstly.
Step 1Turn off Mac and turn on it. On turning it on, press and hold down both the Command key and R key, which will direct your computer to start up from the Recovery Partition.
Step 2Release both keys once you see the Apple logo appear in the middle of the screen, and your Mac will enter into Recovery Mode or spinning globe.
Note: Newer and some older Mac computers will automatically try to start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet, when unable to start up from the built-in recovery system. Then you will see a spinning globe, instead of Apple logo.
Step 3After the startup is complete, you should see the utilities window.
Then it gives you 4 options, Restore From Time Machine Backup, Reinstall macOS, Get Help Online, and Disk Utility.
After entering into Recovery Partition, let’s see how it works now.
Part 2. What Does Recovery Partition Do?
Restore From Time Machine Backup
Free Mac Partition Recovery Software
If you have made a backup of your system, then you could restore your Mac from Time Machine in this way.
One thing you may notice that, the restore is the whole data restore to replace all existing data on your Mac. To some extent, Time Machine restore is to Mac what iCloud/iTunes restore on iPhone/iPad/iPod.
For avoiding the forcible data overwritten for all, we recommend Aiseesoft Mac Data Recovery.
It is the data recovery software for Mac users, to recover deleted or lost photos, videos, audio, documents, and other data, whether your Mac is crashed, emptied trash, unexpectedly operations, or partition deleted, virus attack, even other accidents. Moreover, it lets you recover overwritten, unsaved, permanntly deleted files on Mac easily.
- Preview and recover data from Mac selectively.
- Restore photos, videos, audio, emails, documents, and more to Mac.
- Keep existing and restored data safe simultaneously.
- Work for Mac 10.7 and above (macOS Monterey is supported).
Note: For Mac running Mac OS X El Capitan or later, you need to disable System Integrity Protection firstly for using some software, like Mac Data Recovery on your Mac to acquire some permission to scan it.
Step 1Run Mac Data Recovery
Free download Mac Data Recovery on your computer, install and run it immediately.
Click “Mac Data Recovery”.
Step 2Scan Mac
After launching, you need to checkmark the data types and disk drive for scanning in the main interface.
As for data type, you are able to scan images, audio, video, email, documents and other data.
As for the drive, you need to tick your Mac drive.
Moreover, this software also lets you scan the external drive on your Mac, like camera card, flash drive card, and more.
Click 'Scan' to start a quick scan on your Mac.
Step 3Restore data from Mac
After the scan is complete, you will find all your data types listed in the result. From the left pane, you can see the data types, click it to view the data details in the right window and click 'Recover' to extract the lost or deleted data to your Mac.
Reinstall macOS (or Reinstall OS X)
This option will help you to download and reinstall the Mac operating system.
The reinstallation version of macOS depends on the key combination you used during startup.
Before you do it, do not forget backup Mac to protect your important data.
Get Help Online
This link will direct you to visit Apple’s support website by opening your browser. However, browser plug-ins and extensions are disabled.
Disk Utility
Disk Utility function enables you to repair and erase hard disk.
These additional utilities are available from the Utilities menu in the menu bar:
Moreover, such additional utilities are also accessible from the Utilities menu, as Firmware Password Utility or Startup Security Utility, Network Utility and Terminal.
If you regret the boot of Recovery Partition, just quit it. Choose “Restart” or “Shut Down” from the Apple menu.
Part 3. How to Create Recovery Partition on Mac?
Generally speaking, you do not need to download Recovery Partition, because it is the built-in since OS X 10.7 Lion, when Apple stopped selling boxed copies of its operating systems. However, for one reason or another, you may need to create a one on Mac for backup with USB flash drive.
Here are the steps.
Step 1Download a copy of the “Install OS X” or “Install Mac OS X” from the Mac App Store under the “Purchases” tab. You should match the macOS version with your Mac, for example, the “Install macOS Mojave”. Meanwhile, insert USB flash drive into your Mac.
Step 2Open Disk Utility (in the “Utilities” folder inside the “Applications” directory.), select the “Volume” in the sidebar, and the Volume is in the top part, not underneath.
Step 3Click “Erase”, and make sure it says “Untitled” without changing it. Click “Erase”.
Step 4Open Terminal, cut and paste the correct create install media text into Terminal.
For example, for creating macOS High Sierra, just use the following codec:
sudo /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app --nointeraction
Step 5You will need to type your admin account password when prompted, enter 'y' and press Return.
Then it will wipe out your flash drive firstly, and then turn it into a bootable installer.
Wait a second, and you will complete the whole process.
Part 4. How to Delete Recovery Partition on Mac?
If you have created a backup of the latest macOS installer, and want to free up about 600 MB of disk space on your Mac, then deleting Recovery Partition will be an idea.
Step 1pen Terminal app and enter the following command:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
Step 2Open the Disk Utility app. Select “Debug” in the menu bar at the top > “Show every Partition”.
Step 3At the top, select “Recovery HD” > Click the Mount icon to make it active, and you will see it no longer grayed.
Step 4Secondary-click on the mouse and then selecting “Erase” to delete partition recovery.
Step 5Select the “Partition” tab > Click to select the small Recovery HD partition > Click the minus symbol, beneath, to remove it.
Then a conformation dialogue will pop up, and you just need to read it and confirm the action to delete it.
Step 6After deleting partition recovery on Mac, you can check if it has been removed.
Go to Terminal app and enter the following command:
diskutil list
Then you will see it has been deleted from your Mac.
For exiting Debug menu, you just need to type the following command into Terminal app:
defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 0
Then just closing Terminal and Disk Utility is the last step.
Part 5. How to Fix Recovery Partition on Mac not Working?
Recovery Partition is very important for Mac users. However, once you find Command + R not working, and you can boot into startup, you should know how to fix it.
Here are the some basic solutions.
Solution 1. Internet Recovery
If you can connect your Mac online, you can try Internet Recovery to fix the issue.
Get the details to use Internet Recovery Mac.
Solution 2. Restore from Time Machine
As mentioned above, Time Machine can help you restore Mac exactly.
Step 1Reboot your Mac and press “Option” when you hear the startup music.
Step 2Connect your external hard drive with Time Machine backup to Mac and it will come out.
Step 3Choose the Recovery Drive to launch Mac.
Solution 3. Bootable USB disk drive copy
If you have created the Recovery Partition, then here you are gaining another one opportunity to fix this problem by using the USB flash drive copy.
Step 1Reboot your Mac and press “Option” when you hear the startup music.
Step 2Connect your USB flash drive with the backup to Mac and it will come out.
Step 3Choose USB flash drive to launch Mac.
Solution 4. Reinstall macOS
This is the last solution we can suggest. However, reinstalling macOS will erase all content and data on Mac currently. So you should think twice.
Conclusion
This page mainly talks about the Recovery Partition on Mac, and how to use it. You can boot, create or delete it with the detailed guide. Moreover, when Recovery Partition on Mac is not working, you can also follow the solutions above to fix it easily.
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January 27, 2021 19:33 / Posted by Andrew Miller to File Recovery
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Summary :
If you connect a drive formatted in Mac to a Windows PC, you’ll be prompted to format it before use. That is to say, you are not allowed to view anything saved on it before formatting. But the question is: if you click Format disk, your data will be ruined. This post from MiniTool will introduce several useful ways to help you with that; please read carefully.
Quick Navigation :
Can You Read Mac Drive on Windows
Many people doubt that whether they can read Mac drive on Windows. Some took action: they removed the drive from Mac and connected it to a Windows PC properly. But after connecting the Mac-formatted drive to Windows, a prompt window will pop up automatically on the screen, saying that they need to format the disk before use.
Don’t Format the Drive
You should click Cancel instead of Format disk when seeing this prompt. Why? That is simply because the formatting action will damage your data saved on that drive. Is there any other way to read a Mac-formatted drive on Windows? Sure, it is; some effective ways used by other users will be shown to you later on this page.
What Does Formatting a Hard Drive Do
Some users said they clicked on the Format disk button by mistake when seeing the prompt window mentioned above; they were wondering if there’s any way to help them recover a formatted hard drive. Luckily, the answer is yes.
What does disk formatting mean?
Formatting a hard disk/drive refers to delete all the file & folders save on a drive and set a certain file system for it. The formatting action is performed to prepare a data storage device (including hard disk drive, solid-state drive, USB flash drive, and SD card) for initial use. Two of the most obvious results of formatting a hard disk are: deleting data and changing file system.
Besides, there are also other benefits of disk formatting:
- Get more space on disk.
- Solve disk problems caused by soft failure.
- Improve disk/system performance greatly.
- And so on.
Do you know how to improve Windows 10 performance effectively?
It’s necessary to improve Windows 10 performance effectively since various problems will occur inevitably on a system that has been used for a long time.
Recover Formatted Hard Drive
The first and the most important thing to do after formatting a hard drive is to recover precious data from hard drive. MiniTool Power Data Recovery can be a good data recovery assistant: it’s clean, safe, and professional. Please free download the trial edition to experience this data recovery tool first before you decide to buy it; after that, double click on the setup program to finish installing the software on your Windows computer, on which the Mac hard drives are formatted.
Follow this guide to recover data from Mac formatted external hard drives:
- Click Start now at the end of installation to launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery. You can also open it by double clicking on the software icon.
- Wait for a few seconds until the disk loading process is finished automatically.
- Select Devices from the top of the software pane.
- Choose the formatted Mac drive under it.
- Double click on the target drive directly or click on the Scan button.
- The full scan will be started at once; more and more files and folders will be found during the scan. Please make sure the Mac hard drive is always connected to your computer.
- Browse the found items carefully to decide which files are needed and which are not; add a checkmark into the square box in from of all the files you want to recover. If you can’t confirm, go to view the content before recovery by clicking Preview.
- Click on the Save button in the lower right corner.
- Select a storage path in the pop-up window to store the files waiting to be recovered; please make sure it has enough free space left. (You shouldn’t select the original Mac-formatted drive as the storage location in order to avoid secondary damage.)
- Click on the OK button in the same window to confirm your selection.
- Then, wait until all the files saved on Mac hard drive have been recovered successfully to appointed place. A prompt window will show up to inform you of the recovery result.
MiniTool Power Data Recovery is also a great tool for recovering formatted SD card or broken/corrupted USB stick.
After the data recovery process has been completed, you may transfer back the recovered files to the formatted disk as long as you can confirm that you’ve got back all the files you need.
What about Windows 10 read Mac drive? Please read the following sections.
Can a Mac external drive be read on a PC?
A lot of people are wondering whether they can read Mac drive on Windows 10 with freeware. In fact, there is both free and paid software to help people read Mac drive on PC easily, without formatting the disk. I’ll introduce some of the useful software you can use on Windows 10 to read files and folders from Mac-formatted drive.
Choice 1: HFSExplorer
HFSExplorer is completely free; it’s a basic application designed to help users read Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images. HFSExplorer gives support to various file systems: HFS (the Standard file system on Mac), HFS+ (the Extended file system on Mac OS), HFSX (the Extended Mac OS file system with case sensitive file names), etc.
What Does HFSExplorer Allow You to Do
- Browse volumes on Mac by using a graphical file system browser.
- Check the volume related information.
- Extract files you need (copy files to Windows hard disk free).
- Mount & read disk images like .dmg and .sparsebundle.
- Create disk images from the volume on Mac.
The partition schemes including Master Boot Record, GUID Partition Table, and Apple Partition Map are supported by HFSExplorer.
Attention!
You need to install Java first if you don’t have it on your PC since it’s required (Sun's Java SE runtime environment version 5.0 or greater in which OpenJDK works fine).
HFSExplorer: Launch error
No Java runtime environment found. HFSExplorer cannot function without Java.
Press “OK” to open up http://www.java.com where you can download a Java runtime environment for your system.
You should just click OK as prompted to download & install proper runtime environment when seeing the window above.
How to Use HFSExplorer to Read Mac Hard Drive on Windows
HFSExplorer is a good tool to help you read your Mac-formatted drive on your Windows PC.
- Connect the Mac-formatted drive to Windows 10 PC.
- Run HFSExplorer as administrator.
- Select File from the menu bar.
- Choose Load file system from device
- Click Autodetect to load the connected hard drive.
- Choose the files & folders you want to view in the HFS+ drive.
- Click Extract in the graphical window.
- Select a folder as the destination.
- Expand the folder to read Mac drive files on a Windows 10 PC.
Attention:
- HFS/HFS+/HSFX partitions can all be detected by using HFSExplorer.
- You can also Select a device or Specify device name manually in step 5.
If the connected external hard drive is not showing up on PC, you can’t detect it in step 5. You must make it appear in Windows first.
Is there any other hard drive reader for Windows? Of course, yes; please move on.
Choice 2: Apple HFS+ Drivers
Another way to access HFS + files in Windows 10 for free is installing Apple HFS + drivers.
Steps to Read Mac Drives on PC with Apple HFS + Drivers
First, you should make sure you don’t have Paragon or MacDrive (the hard drive readers I will talk about later) on your Windows computer. If you do, please remove them now.
Second, you should download the correct Windows driver package to your local drive.
Third, you should configure your Windows as follow.
- Go to the default download path (Downloads folder) to extract the downloaded zip file.
- Find AppleHFS.sys and AppleMNT.sys files.
- Copy them by pressing Ctrl + C (you can also do it by right clicking & choosing Copy).
- Go to this path: C:WindowsSystem32drivers.
- Copy them by pressing Ctrl + V (you can also right click on any blank area & choose Paste).
- Navigate to the downloaded folder to find Add_AppleHFS.reg file.
- Open the .reg file to bring up a Registry Editor prompt window.
- Click on the Yes button and then click OK.
- Restart your computer to make changes take effect.
Fourth, you should connect the Mac-formatted drive to your PC -> open File Explorer (also called Windows Explorer) -> locate that drive under This PC -> access files you want.
Choice 3: HFS+ for Windows
Though the Paragon HFS+ for Windows is a paid hard driver reader, you’ll love it after using.
What Can Paragon HFS+ for Windows Do for You
Missing Recovery Partition Mac
- The speed is fast and the performance is stable.
- The Mac file systems are integrated into Windows File Explorer.
- It provides full read and write access to Mac drives formatted with HFS, HFS +, and HFSX (just like other drives in Windows).
- It allows Windows programs to read from or write to the Mac-formatted drive on Windows.
- There are additional features that worth the cost.
How Much Does It Cost
The Paragon HFS+ for Windows is sold on the official website for $19.95 with a single seat license; $49.95 with one license worked on 3 PCs.
If you don’t want to spend money in reading Mac drive on Windows, you should download the trial edition; it is free for use for 10 days. You can access, copy files from or to the Mac drive during this period; it’s enough.
Choice 4: MacDrive
If your Mac drive is formatted with APFS (Apple File System), you won’t be able to read Mac hard drive on Windows because there are no free apps designed for it. But you have many choices of paid applications to access & edit Mac drive files on Windows; MacDrive is a popular one designed by Mediafour.
Merits of MacDrive
- It is used to help users read data from and write data to Mac disks from Windows directly.
- You can read both APFS and HFS+ drives in File Explorer.
- It allows you to create and partition Mac disks on your Windows.
- A graphical interface is offered for Mac-formatted drives verification, format, and repair.
- It’s a trusted solution which can date back to 1996.
The only drawback of MacDrive seems to be the selling price is higher than some similar tools. You need to pay $49.99 for the Standard version or $69.99 for the Pro version.
Is it worth the price? Yes, if you have such needs; it also includes unique features like support for Mac-formatted RAID disks.
Choice 5: Paragon APFS for Windows
Paragon also designed an APFS for Windows app for reading APFS Mac drive on Windows; it is considered as one of the main competitors of MacDrive.
Features of Paragon APFS for Windows
- It provides read and write access to Mac drives formatted with APFS.
- It also allows you to access and edit compressed and cloned files (you can only access the encrypted volumes without making any changes).
- It gives support to auto-mounting at start-up; the partition tools of MacDrive are not included in this app.
The biggest disadvantage of Paragon APFS for Windows when compared to MacDrive is the HFS+ support. The biggest advantage of Paragon APFS for Windows over MacDrive is the price – it costs only $49.95 for one license worked on 3 PCs.
Of course, there are many other tools available for you to read Mac drives on Windows (10/8/7, etc.).
Bonus Tip
You can format your Mac hard drive to exFAT, which supports both Windows and Mac OS X. In this way, you can get full read and write access to exFAT drives on Windows without any additional third-party software.
The only thing you need to worry is that the data on Mac drives will be removed. So you need to turn to MiniTool Power Data Recovery as mentioned in part 1 to recover the files you need after formatting.
How to format a hard drive? Basically, there are three ways.
- Right click on the drive in File Explorer -> choose Format.
- OpenDisk Management -> right click on the target drive -> choose Format.
- Format Partition with MiniTool Partition Wizard – a professional disk manager.
Recover Deleted Partition Mac
Final Thoughts
Free Mac Partition Recovery Software Windows 10
Though you can’t access a Mac-formatted drive on a Windows computer directly, there are useful ways and tools to help you read Mac drive on Windows easily. Please just follow the steps mentioned above and choose the tool depending on your needs.